BLOG 10/27/17. WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO ‘ALL SAINTS DAY’?

BLOG 1027/17. WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO ALL SAINTS DAY?

Somewhere along the way “goblins and ghosties, and things that go bump in the night” replaced a venerable church remembrance of all of those wonderful Christian people along the way who gave us models of how to live our new lives in Christ. Alas! Labor Day is hardly over when the commercial interests of our day begin advertising all the accoutrements of Halloween, i.e., costumes, tons of candies, jack-o-lanterns, and on and on. That’s sad. Historically, out of the middle ages—it is true—there came the mythological last fling of all the agents of the darkness on the eve of All Hallowed’s Day, when the church remembered the agents of the light. All Saints Day got replaced by Halloween, and that’s sad.

We need saints. We need models of new creation living. The apostle Paul would address all of Christ’s followers in the church at Corinth as saints and then would unabashedly tell them to become imitators of himself, even as he was of Christ. “What does a follower of Christ look like? Look at me and you’ll see a model.” Is that vanity? No, not at all. We need models, we need saints, we need to see flesh and blood examples of what it means to have Christ dwelling in our very human lives by his Spirit.

To be honest, the Roman Catholic folk muddied the waters here, when the Vatican began to determine who was a saint, and so there are special days given to honor the folk they name as legitimate saints. I once had a book identifying all those saints, and I found it fascinating to see the great diversity of faithful witnesses they were honoring. In our own times, we have seen the Vatican honoring Mother Teresa of Calcutta, and Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador. Their examples are sterling. But most of us live out our attempts at faithful discipleship in need of those who have touched our lives personally, and in a context with which we can identify. We need our own personal All Saints Day.

Alright, I’m not about to have any influence on diminishing the vast economic boon to those who make their profits off of the Halloween bonanza. But I would like to reclaim All Saints Day from forgetfulness. All Saints Day is November 1st. Let me share with you my own practice that I have found a real blessing. I don’t even know how I started this, but each year on All Saints Day I sit down and retrieve the name all of those Christian persons that God has used in my life to provide me models, and encouragement, and to pray for me. I write these in the back of my prayer journal. Every year I think of others that I had not thought of before. These are often little people, modest people, who were a blessing to me and who modeled faith and love and humility. It does, to be sure, include those whom I never met, whose writings have influenced my understanding of the faith, but it focuses on the modest saints that God has brought into my life when I needed them. The list gets longer as I remember more of those each year. Next Tuesday is that day for me.

But a second practice that I commend is my prayer that I, in fact, may be such a saint to others, and that the faithful God, who called me Christ, will make me one for whom others give thanks. Happy All Saints Day! Join me in reclaiming it as a good reminder that it is God who is building his church in the most unlikely places and with the most unlikely persons. “For all the saints, who from their labors rest, Thy name O Jesus be forever blest.”

About rthenderson

Sixty years a pastor-teacher within the Presbyterian Church. Author of several books, the latest of which are a trilogy on missional ecclesiology: ENCHANTED COMMUNITY: JOURNEY INTO THE MYSTERY OF THE CHURCH, then, REFOUNDING THE CHURCH FROM THE UNDERSIDE, then THE CHURCH AND THE RELENTLESS DARKNESS. Previous to this trilogy was A DOOR OF HOPE: SPIRITUAL CONFLICT IN PASTORAL MINISTRY, and SUBVERSIVE JESUS, RADICAL FAITH. I am a native of West Palm Beach, Florida, a graduate of Davidson College, then of Columbia and Westminster Theological Seminaries.
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One Response to BLOG 10/27/17. WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO ‘ALL SAINTS DAY’?

  1. rthenderson says:

    SARAH: YOU’RE TOO GENEROUS

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